Buck Moon

Arranged by @[email protected]

A meetup for users of independent web sites outside big tech. Come along users of Mastodon, pixelfed, wordpress, Bluesky PDS, independent bloggers, one and all.
Whether just a user or if you run your own kinky sites/projects this is the place to meet others.

Details

🗓️ Thursday 3pm – 4pm CET

📍 Eagle Bar, Ground Floor

Add Calendar Reminder

iCalendar

Google Calendar

Well this was a Very fun night. I got to work on some new an interesting boots worn by a regular,

I got to talk through the process with someone who was clearly very interested in the process of producing a good shine.

And I got to do a full body gear moisturizing/massage to one of my favorite regulars @bearlthr.com!

So I realized I have not Posted any of the amazing people Ive had in my chair from the Winter Hunter nights.

Its Felt like a long winter, and a very exhausting January but with plenty of good memories.

So please enjoy this Photodump.

@erin Looks incredibly peaceful. ☺️ #jealous

Photoshoot with Dash

Loved doing this photo shoot set up by @londonleathermen for their photobooth day,

The photographer was my friend Dash who is insanely good at what he does and always really fun to work with.

I’m so glad i got to debut my ‘Bull drone’ look here. I bought the gas mask especially that morning from Fetishfreak, along with the rubber gloves.

Alas the gloves are a little too tight to wear long term, but they looked great in the photos.

Dash has a such a great use of color in his photos and always has a really cinematic style to them.

If you want to contact him he can be contacted at https://www.instagram.com/pigtures.by.dash/

#BullDrone #RubberBear #RubberDrone #rubberman

Hunter April 2025 | Bootblack’s Eye View

This Hunter was a lot of fun. I really wasn’t sure how busy it was, since it seemed like half of all London kinksters were in Berlin for the Folsom Easter weekend.

However it turned out to be a really nice crowed.

I also got to reconnect with some friends who I had not seen in a very long while and had some very interesting conversations with people on the bootblack stand.

I also had a challenging pair of boots. these were old army boots that had been used extensively on a construction site and were worse for wear. I was able to give them advice on what pair of boots to look for next for construction work. (see if you can guess from the photos who was the constriction workie)

I was even able to have some pre planed fun with some people in the darkroom after my shift.

#bootblacking #bootblacksEyeView #HunterLDN #leathermen

Hunter December 2024 | Bootblack’s Eye View

It was a slower night tonight. From talking to a lot of the crowed a lot of peope were having to do christmas work parties before they came, and others wanted to do rubber underground before they came.

My chair was also a little less buisy than normal, with only 5 Johns. this was a good thing because it meant i got to have more fun. it felt nice to chill and talk with people after doing thier boots. Bootblacking is often about the connection with the person you are working on and i was really feeling it tonight.

I also loved that the bootblack stand was right underneath the christmas tree. That felt special.

#bootblacking #bootblacksEyeView #leather #leathermen

Hanky Experiement

#bootblacking #hankyCode

https://bootblackcub.com/blog/hanky-experiement/

@raiderrobert Maybe what you’re thinking of is related to the concept of #metastability? I was introduced to it first by https://brooker.co.za/blog/2023/08/25/party-time.html

I’m starting a new feature for @formak: semi-automated hyper-parameter selection for models and Kalman Filters.

You can read the design doc for the feature here: https://github.com/buckbaskin/formak/blob/hyperparameter-selection/docs/designs/hyperparameter_selection.md

Feedback on the design is welcome here or on GitHub

#Python #sklearn #KalmanFilter #OpenSource #design

@hugovk I ran the same script on 3.10, 3.11 and 3.12, all on Sympy 1.12 . 3 samples of the cumulative time for each (in seconds):
3.10: [50.9, 50.7, 49.2]
3.11: [51.6, 53.9, 51.8]
3.12: [58.9, 59.4, 60.3]

Even based on this not very precise profiling with a small sample size, it seems like there's a material slow down from 3.10 -> 3.12 and a possible slowdown for 3.10 -> 3.11 (but the distributions are closer).

Code versions used for testing: https://github.com/buckbaskin/formak/pull/20
#Python #Python312

@formak I wrote up a post about developing the latest feature for #FormaK and the ups and downs along the way

In the middle there was a nice visual of the sensor bias, but only by way of a long detour into unnecessary work that was removed before the PR merged

https://buckbaskin.com/blog/strapdown-imu-reference-model-new-formak-feature.html

One of my favorite papers from IROS 2023 was "Navlie: A Python Package for State Estimation on Lie Groups". I enjoyed getting to chat with the author and am excited because the package provides #Python implementations of estimators (including Kalman filters). I look forward to following the development of the package
Docs: https://decargroup.github.io/navlie/_build/html/index.html
#robotics #stateestimation #kalmanfilter #iros #IROS2023

New feature launch for #FormaK: a managed #KalmanFilter runtime!

I'd been stuck trying to simplify the complexity of managing a process and multiple sensor models since I introduced calibration (which added more complexity... not helping...). In the end I landed on a single tick function call with a dose of #SFINAE that handles sensors of any type and takes care of the rest under the hood.

As always, it comes in #Python and #Cpp

Blog: https://buckbaskin.com/blog/formak-runtime-new-formak-feature.html
Github: https://github.com/buckbaskin/formak/pull/17

New feature launch for #FormaK: Calibration!

This feature started with a straightforward idea: use FormaK to model a #rocket launch based on #NASA data. Unfortunately, FormaK was missing support for orienting the IMU in the rocket's frame. To fix this, I added calibration support for sensor and process models with the same syntax that supports states and control inputs.

New features coming soon!

NASA data: https://data.nasa.gov/Aerospace/Deorbit-Descent-and-Landing-Flight-1-DDL-F1-/vicw-ivgd
Blog: https://buckbaskin.com/blog/calibration-new-formak-feature.html
Github: https://github.com/buckbaskin/formak/pull/12

There’s also the persnickety thing about the build time that I’d missed in the first version. The existing Sympy tooling slowed way down for a larger model, but it wasn’t clear where the slow down was coming from and I assumed it was in the compile stage. In the end after much debugging it turned out that calling simplify on a large expression didn’t scale well and took 100s of seconds.

Is there a #Python tool to profile function calls as the program is running?
#FormaK #OpenSource

One important thing I learned while implementing the calibration feature: the templating approach that I picked for code generation doesn’t necessarily scale well. The template that used to look like a nice C++ function written with comments is now a mess of formatting pragmas and conditional blocks. More to come on this soon
#FormaK #OpenSource #cpp #CodeGeneration

A new feature has landed for #FormaK! The original models only supported time varying state estimates and control inputs, now it’s easy to include fixed calibration parameters into the models at runtime. This unlocks new models, like the rocket model I referenced in my last feature release

Check out the “What’s New” page for more
https://github.com/buckbaskin/formak/blob/master/docs/whats-new.md#2023-05-05-calibration

#python #cpp #CodeGeneration #kalman #filter

Working on something new for #FormaK. First order of business is writing out the kinematics math and sensor models, then it’s going to be a two step process to apply it to the data from a 2020 #NASA rocket launch.
1. `model.fit` to match params from data based on the scikit-learn interface
2. `cpp.compile` to generate the C++ for the optimized model

#python #cpp

One of the things I learned that I didn’t know while developing this feature: #Bazel. First and foremost, I don’t have a good mental model of how it works, especially when it comes to looking up compilers and setting options for compilers. #FormaK benefits by being able to easily zip together Python, C++ and generated C++ in Bazel, but working on improving the C++ integration feels like stumbling in the dark hoping I find a light switch

A new feature has landed for #FormaK! Compiling Python to C++ is as easy as switching `python.compile` to `cpp.compile` https://github.com/buckbaskin/formak/pull/9 #python #cpp

Coming Soon! A new feature design is getting released for #FormaK to compile #Python models to #cpp models. Stay tuned!